pow10-rule-03-no-dynamic-memory

name	pow10-rule-03-no-dynamic-memory
description	NASA Power of 10 Rule 3 — No dynamic memory allocation after initialization. Severity: blocker.

Rule 3 — No Dynamic Memory After Init

Severity: blocker

Statement

After the initialization phase, no heap allocation. All memory comes from fixed-size pools, the stack, or static buffers. Worst-case memory usage must be analyzable at build time.

Rationale

Heap allocation is nondeterministic: it can fail, fragment, leak, or be used after free. None of these failure modes are statically rule-out-able. Eliminating post-init allocation makes worst-case memory provable.

Universal violation patterns

• Heap allocation calls in hot paths (malloc, new, make([]T, n), [])
• Implicit allocations from string concatenation, autoboxing, lambda capture
• Variable-size buffers grown inside loops
• Container growth without pre-sized capacity

Universal remediation pattern

Allocate at init time. Reuse buffers (object pools, ring buffers, static arrays). Cap input sizes with assertions so worst-case memory is provable. Mark the init/post-init boundary explicitly.

Init phase boundary

Tag the end of init explicitly so reviewers and tools know where the no-alloc rule kicks in:

int main(void) {
    init_pools();
    init_drivers();
    // pow10:init-end
    for (;;) { tick(); }
}

Per-language guidance

• C: references/c.md
• Go: references/go.md
• Python: references/python.md (apply in spirit — CPython allocates constantly)
• Java: references/java.md
• Kotlin: references/kotlin.md

Waiver convention

// pow10: allow rule=3 until=YYYY-MM-DD owner=<handle> reason="..."

Citations

• Holzmann 2006 — Rule 3
• JPL Institutional Coding Standard — Rule 5